REDFORD, Texas — On a quiet spring morning, Joe Pineda drives across his land near the Rio Grande, pointing out where he runs cattle and grows alfalfa and the family cemetery that dates back to the late 1800s.
As he reaches the edge of the river, the 52-year-old slows his hulking pickup truck to a crawl. He then talks about his family's deep history in the Big Bend area of West Texas and the days he spent here as a child and the times he brought his own children.
"It's things like that that I'm going to miss," said Pineda as a gentle wind ran through the overgrown reeds and mesquite trees crowding the river. "It's the time that you can enjoy with your kids, and enjoy (the) heritage of your land, where your great-grandparents and everybody else before you lived – and it's going to be taken."
Pineda and his family have received a letter from the federal government warning of eminent domain proceedings if they don't agree to sell the land or voluntarily give access for border wall construction.
It's a scene playing out across the Big Bend as the government looks to build roughly 175 miles of "border barrier." This area, one of the last pockets of untouched frontier country, is set for 30-foot-tall steel fences, patrol roads, flood lighting and surveillance systems.
The federal government plans have united an unusual coalition of people across the political spectrum who say a wall is not needed here. They worry about threats to the environment and Indigenous sites, to impact on the region's famously dark skies and on wild animals, like Black bears, bobcats and bighorn sheep.
It's all part of a $56-million dollar tourism industry that Pineda says is now in jeopardy.
"They're killing our economy with this wall," Pineda said, standing by the Rio Grande. "This area gets a lot of money from tourism. It's going to make everything change, it's gonna be sad."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection tells NPR the agency will try to "avoid or minimize impacts to the environment to the greatest extent possible" in the areas where they plan to build walls.
A gateway to the Big Bend National Park
Historically, the area's rugged and unforgiving terrain has meant fewer people attempting to cross into the U.S. through this region. And since the beginning of President Trump's second term in office, that number has fallen even further. In the first three months of this year, Customs and Border Protection's Big Bend Sector – a vast and seemingly boundless area covering nearly 500 miles of the Rio Grande – saw 498 apprehensions, which is just over a tenth of the apprehensions made in Texas' busiest sector.
"We're not the number one crossing spot," said Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson, who grew up in the region and has been the county's top law enforcement officer for the last 26 years.
In recent months, Dodson, along with four other border sheriffs, wrote federal and state officials to say a border wall in the Big Bend area isn't the "most practical or strategic approach to border security in this area."
"We agree with border security," Dodson said in an interview. "We agree there needs to be walls (in) places. There's no ifs, ands or buts about that, but not here. We just need to be monitored, we need the manpower and I think we'd be very fine."
Dodson's county, the largest by land area in the state, is home to Big Bend National Park.
At one point the beloved destination for hikers and river enthusiasts was set for a border wall too, but CBP now says it's no longer planning to construct 30-foot-tall steel fencing. Instead, the agency will build vehicle barriers and patrol roads along the border in the national park, which archaeologists say will still have an impact and would dig into environmentally and culturally sensitive land.
For Dodson, who has written his own letters to President Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott imploring them to visit the region, the money being poured into border barriers could be better spent. The price tag for a single mile of border barrier in the region: over $17 million dollars.
"These numbers are mind boggling," said Hudspeth County Judge Joanna Mackenzie. "That type of money is generational changing."
Opposition for all sides
In a joint-letter, Mackenzie and all of the top elected local officials on the Texas-Mexico border wrote the government, asking for a say in how border security takes shape in the places they know best. "Tell us is this gonna happen and we don't have a say in it. What can we do, what can we do?" Mackenzie asked. "That's it, what can we do?"
Some private land owners in the Big Bend say they're willing to do whatever it takes, including filing their own lawsuits against the government, to stop the build-up at the border.
"This fight is one we did not ask for," said Raymond Skiles, a longtime wildlife biologist in the region and a landowner himself.
Sitting in his home in Alpine, Texas, Skiles looks at a map Customs and Border Protection sent him.
"If this were to come to pass, it would be a rip in the treasured landscape of the Big Bend," said Skiles, holding back tears. "It'd be like taking a knife to the Mona Lisa, and just cutting it in two and leaving that rent scar across it."
For Skiles, an imposing barrier through the Big Bend would be a painful reminder of what once was, an unwanted memorial to the place he calls home.
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